June 8, 2018

New Orleans. March, 1991

One of the many novelties to be witnessed in this evocative city is the change of pace from one street to the next. Especially in the French Quarter. One minute you’re on Bourbon Street, passing chock-a-block honky-tonk bars with Hurricane-toting drunken tourists spilling onto the pavement. The next moment, you find yourself in front of a residence with some serene and dreamlike decorative touches. Look at this cast-iron cornstalk fence, for example, found, not so surprisingly, in front of the Cornstalk Hotel on Royal Street. Legend holds that an early owner of this early 1800s home installed the fence so that his young bride would be less homesick for the cornfields of her native Iowa. Pumpkins form the base of the fence, and there’s even a butterfly that seems to have recently alighted on the front gate. But would you expect anything less from a city whose streetcars (now buses) carry names like Desire?